Friday, November 14, 2008

Do You Suffer from cold palms?

I bought a pair of fingerless gloves today. I just had to admit it.

I've always considered fingerless gloves, for most people, to be an odd, Madonna-of-the-80's-esque affectation. Sure there are always the people who need them for medical reasons, or the people who have to be outside/somewhere cold yet still retain dexterity that is lacking with gloves. But for most people: trend-victim! Get some real gloves, since the tips of your fingers are generally even colder than your palms!

But then I was outside typing the other day. It was beautiful and sunny out. I brought the laptop outside and let the kids play in the sandbox while I wrote for a half hour. But no matter how beautiful it was, it was still November. It was cold (okay, technically it's November today, too, and it's not cold, but it was cold last week when I was out there!)

My hands were cold. I couldn't wear gloves since it would interfere with my typing ability. What did I need? Fingerless gloves. All those years of judging people for their fingerless gloves, and now here I was, seeing the usefulness of them.

I put it out of my head. How often am I going to be sitting outside with my laptop in 40 degree weather? Not that often!

But then today I was at the store, and I saw fingerless gloves. Fine. Then I saw the sign above it: 60% off. Which makes sense, since it's really only 40% of a glove. I looked at the price: $3.50. Sold!

So I'm now the proud owner of fingerless gloves. I can't wait until the next 40 degree sunny day, so I can head out to the backyard to type in comfort!

And I apologize to all those fingerless glove wearers I've unfairly judged in the past.

________________

Current NaNo Word Count: 31,695. I hope to get in another 1k or so tonight. We'll see.

Current NaNo Attitude: Wanting to take a day off. Yo, that's what December's for!

I complained yesterday about my typing skills. Then I tried out this awesome thing called Write or Die on DrWicked.com. You enter your word goal and time, and then it brings up a window for you to type in. If you stop typing for too long, the screen turns colors, and eventually sings you annoying music. So you have to keep typing constantly.

It's so fun.

I wrote 928 (crappy) words in 20 minutes yesterday, right after I'd complained that about 750 was my max typing speed. Yeah, it turns out it wasn't. I guess it's not my typing skills slowing me down regularly, but rather my thinking skills.

I don't know how often I'll use this. It was great yesterday when I was on a roll. I think it would be really good for when I'm stuck as well as it would force me to barrel through the block. But today I've been writing a hard part. I have the idea, it's just a complicated, emotionally rough section. It's been SLOW, but I've needed the time to think. So I've resisted the urge to speed things up, even though today I wrote a paltry 1,000 words in nearly two hours. See, yesterday I did about that in twenty minutes. I would hope the writing today was more gooder*, but I'm not sure the slower pace really helped all that much :)

Back to banging my head against this part of the novel!

*"More gooder" perfectly describes the incremental improvement from complete and total junk to total junk.

I actually knitted a pair of fingerless gloves that have a mitten that folds over. I love them! But you do get the relative warmth of the mitten, and then just free your fingers when you need them. :-)

I never had a pair but coveted the ones my fellow librarians used at the Reference Desk. There are times when the library was really cold and one of air conditioning vents was right over the Reference Desk, making our space even colder. They are great for being able to type.

I see a lot of knitting patterns around the internet for fingerless gloves - I think they're making a big comeback. I've also seen the kind with mitten tops that you can fold over to keep the fingertips warm too.

About Me

I'm a stay at home mom to twin boys who were born in 2005, and a new baby brother born in 2009. We have adventures, we laugh, we cry. I write it all down. Come, enter all ye who dare! But just don't expect this to be an "all parenting all the time" kind of blog. I'll wax poetic about books, or cook up a post about food, or just blurt out some random randomness. Wear a helmet so you don't get hurt!

What I've been reading

Made in America: An Informal History of the English Language in the United States by Bill Bryson. You know how some authors are just a perfect fit for you? That's Bryson for me. I love his writing, and have a weird affection for etymology, so this was a match made in heaven. Loved it!

Travels with Charley: In Search of America by John Steinbeck. What an interesting snapshot of America in the early 60s. Some parts were really compelling, a good read.

John Dies at the End by David Wong. Weird. Not bad, but weird.

Hyperbole and a Half by Allie Brosh. I love her blog--at least half of this book is directly reprinted from the blog so I'd already read it. She touches on depression (like on her blog), which provides that strange funny/depressing dichotomy.

Stranger than Fiction by Chuck Palahniuk. Collection of short autobiographical and non-fiction stuff. Great...enjoyed more than some of his novels!

Ready Player One by Ernest Cline. Really enjoyable book! Part dystopian, part techno thriller, with some lite cyberpunk tossed in along with heavy doses of geek culture and 80's memorabilia. Definitely worth a read!

Tweak: Growing Up On Methamphetamines by Nic Sheff. I read Beautiful Boy, the memoir by Nic Sheff's father about his meth addiction last month. To say a drug addict makes a questionably believable narrator is something of an understatement, but this was still a really interesting story. Would like to read his followup memoir.

My Beloved Brotosaurus: On the Road with Old Bones, New Science, and Our Favorite Dinosaurs by Brian Switek. Interesting science book by a paleontologist. Funny chapter on dinosaur reproduction theories. Overall interesting, though sometimes the author's stories make him sound entirely incapable of advance planning. In a fun way.

Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn. Enjoyed the first half of the book, but thought it was going to be a straightforward "woman in peril" kind of book. Loved when the second part started. Ended up really enjoying this one.

Vurt by Jeff Noon. This book was weird. Not bad, just out there. I'm not a huge fan of cyberpunk, which this is, but this was okay. Would certainly recommend to fans of the genre.